A defence of the principles of love, which are necessary to the unity and…

THE PREFACE TO THOSE READERS Who are of the Excepters mind, and are offended at my Book called, THE CURE OF Church-Divisions.

Brethren, why should I wonder at the fruits of those weaknesses which we are all subject to (some more, some less) in this state of imperfection? and which I so lately told you of at large, in my Character of and Directions for Weak-Christians. If a spirit of Infallibility and Miracles in Paul and other the Apostles of our Lord, could not overcome these lamentable failings, in their hearers and followers, in the Primitive ⟨p. 2⟩Church, why should such as I look for more success. If Paul thought his Galatians foolish and bewitched Gal. 3. 1. and his Corinthian Christians to be babes, yea Carnal and not Spiritual, because there were among them [Greek or Hebrew], envying, strife, and divisions, or as the words signify, zeal or emulation, strife and separations or factions, or dividing into several parties, while one saith, I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos; what wonder if we are no better now. But our sins are not the less because that others had the like, but the greater because we take not warning by them, when the spirit of God hath so smartly reprehended them.

BRethren, why should I wonder at the fruits of those weaknesses which we are all subject to (some more, some less) in this state of imperfection? and which I so lately told you of at large, in my Character of and Directions for Weak-Christians. If a spirit of Infallibility and Miracles in Paul and other the Apostles of our Lord, could not overcome these lamentable failings, in their hearers and followers, in the Primitive ⟨p. 2⟩Church, why should such as I look for more success. If Paul thought his Galatians foolish and bewitched Gal. 3. 1. and his Corinthian Christians to be babes, yea Carnal and not Spiritual, because there were among them , envying, strife, and divisions, or as the words signifie, zeal or emulation, strife and separations or factions, or dividing into several parties, while one saith, I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos; what wonder if we are no better now. But our sins are not the less because that others had the like, but the greater because we take not warning by them, when the spirit of God hath so smartly reprehended them.